Distributed storage systems have rapidly developed over the last decade as networks grow in capacity and speed. With networks expanding from local area networks (LAN) to global wide area networks (WAN), businesses are becoming more globally distributed, resulting in a demand for distributed storage systems to provide data storage and access over remote geographic locations. There is thus a need in the art for a new method and system for distributing data storage over a general purpose network.
Prior art references considered to be relevant as background to the presently disclosed subject matter are listed below. Acknowledgement of the references herein is not to be inferred as meaning that these are in any way relevant to the patentability of the presently disclosed subject matter.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0070337, “Apparatus and Method for a Distributed Storage Global Database”, relates to “A geographically distributed storage system for managing the distribution of data elements wherein requests for given data elements incur a geographic inertia. The geographically distributed storage system comprises geographically distributed sites, each comprises a site storage unit for locally storing a portion of a globally coherent distributed database that includes the data elements and a local access point for receiving requests relating to ones of the data elements. The geographically distributed storage system comprises a data management module for forwarding at least one requested data element to the local access point at a first of the geographically distributed sites from which the request is received and storing the at least one requested data element at the first site, thereby to provide local accessibility to the data element for future requests from the first site while maintaining the globally coherency of the distributed database.”
U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,505, “Remote Access and Geographically Distributed Computers in a Globally Addressable Storage Environment”, relates to “A computer system employs a globally addressable storage environment that allows a plurality of networked computers to access data by addressing even when the data is stored on a persistent storage device such as a computer hard disk and other traditionally non-addressable data storage devices. The computers can be located on a single computer network or on a plurality of interconnected computer networks such as two local area networks (LANs) coupled by a wide area network (WAN). The globally addressable storage environment allows data to be accessed and shared by and among the various computers on the plurality of networks.”
International Journal of Computer Applications 2010 (0975-8887), Volume 1-No. 22, “Unified Virtual Storage: Virtualization of Distributed Storage in a Network”, Ms. S. V. Patil et al., describes “a way to efficiently utilize free disk space on Desktop machines connected over a network. In many networks today, the local disks of a client node are only used sporadically. This is an attempt to mange the data storages in a network efficiently and to provide the software support for sharing of disk space on Desktop machines in LAN. In the current situation, storage expansion on conventional servers has constraints like, maximum expansion limitation, costly affair and in case of hardware replacement, up gradation, the manual relocation of Data becomes messy. UVS (Unified Virtual Storage) is an attempt to efficiently utilize freely available disk space on Desktop machines connected over a network. Its purpose to reduce load of data traffic on network server, to efficiently utilize space on client nodes thereby avoiding wastage of space, It also eliminates Hardware restriction for storage Expansion and provides Location transparency of data store. The main advantage of UVS is that it can be seamlessly integrated into the existing infrastructure (Local Area Network system). Virtual Storage is virtually infinite supporting scalable architecture. The client node can use the Unified Virtual Drive as a single point access for Distributed Storage across different servers thereby eliminating an individual addressing of the servers. The performance of prototype implemented on a UVS Server connected by network and performance is better the n the centralized system and that the overhead of the framework is moderate even during high load.”
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/0153770, “Dynamic Structural Management of a Distributed Caching Infrastructure”, relates to “a method, system and computer program product for the dynamic structural management of an n-Tier distributed caching infrastructure. In an embodiment of the invention, a method of dynamic structural management of an n-Tier distributed caching infrastructure includes establishing a communicative connection to a plurality of cache servers arranged in respective tier nodes in an n-Tier cache, collecting performance metrics for each of the cache servers in the respective tier nodes of the n-Tier cache, identifying a characteristic of a specific cache resource in a corresponding one of the tier nodes of the n-Tier crossing a threshold, and dynamically structuring a set of cache resources including the specific cache resource to account for the identified characteristic”.